Tag: Thumb sucking

As parents, we have had a number of inquisitive experiences, when we are in public places with our twin daughters. None beats all the kind of possible advice given to us by a few family members and a number of complete strangers, regarding the thumb sucking and the finger sucking by the girls.

The context

Like many of the infants and the toddlers, both the girls were into thumb sucking and finger sucking, respectively. I do not remember when the habit started for them. However, I distinctly remember asking the paediatrician about this and the answer he gave. As per the paediatrician, it was a question that he will not take till the girls turned four years. He told us to disregard their thumb sucking and finger sucking and let our daughters live in peace.

He is the person who took care of them for the first ten days of their life in NICU. There is every reason for us to believe and follow whatever he says and this was no different.

Both the girls merrily continued their respective thumb sucking and finger sucking with no disturbance from our side. It so happened that both the girls took up their respective thumb and finger in the mouth only at the time of falling asleep – which meant at the night and during their day-time naps.

The advice and advice and advice

I remember a number of instances when I would be walking on the road with either of my infant daughters putting her thumb/finger in the mouth and sleeping in my arms. Suddenly, I would get a tap on my shoulder from someone whom I had never met and will never again meet in my life.

The stranger would tell me that I should not allow the finger sucking/thumb sucking of my daughter. I would be told that there is an ayurvedic medicine that can be applied to the finger/thumb which ensured that someone in his family lost her/his habit. There were a number of advice listed down – juice of some roots, bitter gourd juice, bandages, tattoos, nail paints, tying up the fingers etc and all of them were found to be effective in their respective cases.

My wife also had similar experiences, getting advice from the women she did not know.

We would go to social functions. I do not think we were noticed much, till the time the girls were awake. Once, either of the girls slept or even better, when both of them slept, suddenly we would become the centre of attraction. Some family members would walk down to us and start rattling off what we should be doing to rid our daughters of their thumb sucking and finger sucking. Few other attendees whom we would not know would descend down to us and start giving their piece of mind.

Once we would say to these benevolent, unasked for, advice givers that we, as parents, were perfectly fine with our daughters’ thumb sucking and finger sucking; long gazes would follow. We would be stared at and looked down upon at as unbeing of a worthy parent.

The current scenario

One girl left her thumb sucking at two and a half years on her own. The other girl continues her finger sucking nonetheless. We asked the paediatrician on the next steps to dissuade her from her sleep-time routine. He said that the only way was to talk her out of the habit. He instructed us not to experiment with any kind of juices, tattoos, bandages, nail paints etc on the finger of the young girl. We are following his advice and will update basis our experiences.

Disclaimer: To clarify, I am not promoting or supporting thumb sucking/finger sucking in any manner. We have been following the paediatrician advice all along and will continue to do so.

Any memories you have of your child’s thumb sucking/finger sucking?

Last week, we had gone to a relative’s place for an overnight stay. The girl invariably put her finger in the mouth while sleeping at the night. The relatives noticed. We were told about the experience with the relative’s daughter. She was given a tattoo on her fingers so that she would not take them in her mouth. When we did not show any enthusiasm for this solution, we were given the option of ayurvedic medicine. We changed the topic of discussion. It reminded me of all the past experiences as regards the thumb sucking and finger sucking of the girls and the torrent of advice, we got.

PS:

Once, we had gone to a restaurant for dinner, the four of us. The girls were about one year old. It had got a bit late; we fed the girls and started our dinner. One of the girls slept in her mother’s arms with the thumb in her mouth. Suddenly, she started crying and to our utter horror, we noticed that the waiter who had taken our order was trying to remove the thumb from our daughter’s mouth. We asked him to stop and even before we could ask him what he was trying to do; he told us that we should not let our daughter suck her thumb and that we are setting a bad example.